A transgender woman detained by ICE for seven months despite being granted asylum has been released

Immigrant and LGBT rights advocates held a protest on June 6, 2018 in response to the death of Roxsana Hernandez, a Honduran transgender woman who was in ICE custody and showing signs of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV. Nicole García Aguilar, a transgender woman from Honduras was released from ICE custody on Wednesday, April 17, 2019 (Mary Hudetz / AP)

A woman from Honduras who had been detained at a U.S. Immigration facility in New Mexico for seven months, even after being granted asylum, was released Wednesday.

Nicole García Aguilar was freed from the Cibola County detention facility in New Mexico on Wednesday, a week after lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for her unjustified detention.

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The 24-year-old woman escaped from Choluteca, a city in the southern area of Honduras, in 2018. After being attacked for being a transgender woman, and receiving death threats, which the police refused to investigate police, she decided to flee the country.

Aguilar crossed into the United States in April, arriving at legal port of entry in Nogales, Ariz., where she presented herself for asylum.

According to The Guardian, she was detained at the country’s only holding location prepared to receive transgender individuals, a privately operated facility in Cibola County in New Mexico,

Tania Linares Garcia, from the National Immigration Justice Centre (NIJC) told The Guardian that the stress caused by the segregation caused her considerable emotional distress. She also lost weight because of it.

Two days after the lawsuit was filed, ICE said she would be discharged, but she remained locked up for five more days. She was finally released Wednesday evening.

According to Cattrachas, a network of lesbian feminists who work for the rights of the Honduran LGBTQ community, 306 LGBT people, including 97 trans people, have been killed in the past decade, and only 20% of cases have been prosecuted.